Ray Rice, Jalen Richard + an old grumpy white guy: Part 1

Over one year ago, my Twitter notifications went off because I had received a private message on twitter. I could not wait to see the hot chick that had just slid into my DM’s. I am not an active user on Twitter and I had not received a message on there in years. Unfortunately, instead of it being the beautiful babe of my dreams, the message was from some guy named Jalen Richard–a pretty short stocky black dude with a somewhat average looking build. Through his message, I found out that Jalen had just wrapped up his senior season of college football at Southern Mississippi. Jalen was a running back prepping for the NFL draft. He wanted guidance. He was NOT looking for guidance from me, but from Ravens running back Ray Rice. After doing some research online, Jalen had found training videos and articles that linked me to Ray. There was no real way to contact Ray at that point, so Jalen reached out to me instead. Jalen explained his situation: He told me that he was a kid chasing a dream. He told me that he spent years of his football career crafting his game after Ray’s game, as he felt like they shared many of the same strengths. Jalen told me that he needed help and he asked if I could make an introduction to Ray. I said, “NO”. I told Jalen that I would not help and I left it at that. Ray and his family were facing adversity at that point and I felt like they needed to keep their circle tighter than ever. Ray loves to help anyone he can, but that was not the time to introduce fresh faces. I would have told Jesus Christ that he couldn’t meet Ray. I will always protect my friends.

After that moment, I had no intention of ever speaking to Jalen again. And I had hoped that he had no intention of ever reaching back out to me…